With regard to Pine Gap, Australia....

Whilst searching for information about Pine Gap, the government installation in Central Australia, I came across a document titled Report 25. It'll be easier if I simply copy and paste what I wrote about it from the Word Document itself.

Report 25 was a document published as a result of several sittings of the Federal Government of Australia with regard to the jurisdiction and oversight of operations and activities at Pine Gap. It has become infamous with Australian conspiracy theorists and paranoid UFO freaks.

That should give you enough background to digest these excerpts from Report 25.

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Excerpt 1:

The national interest analysis prepared by the Department of Defence to support the 1998 Amendment presents the following as the reasons for the proposed treaty action:
The 1998 Agreement is an important indication of the continuing commitment of both the Australian and United States Governments to cooperation at the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap. The Pine Gap Facility is an intelligence collection facility, which serves to support our mutual security interests, and contributes to global security.
The systems supported by Pine Gap will evolve to meet the demands of the post Cold War era, and it is expected that Pine Gap will remain a central element in our cooperation with the United States well into the next century.
All activities at the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility are managed to ensure that they are consistent with Australian interests. The activities take place with the full knowledge and concurrence of the Australian Government, and Australia benefits fully from them. Australians are fully involved in the management and operation of the Joint Defence Facility.

Excerpt 2:

On 8 July 1998, Bill Taylor MP, the Chairman of the former Committee, wrote to the Hon Ian McLachlan MP, who was then Minister for Defence, asking that the Committee be permitted to visit the Joint Defence Facility and receive an on-site, private briefing. The Minister refused the request, arguing that:
By agreement with the United States Government such access is tightly controlled for both US and Australian citizens and limited strictly to personnel with a "need to know".
Members of Parliament and Congress whose responsibilities directly require that they be briefed on the highly classified aspects of the site are fully briefed on its roles and functions and have unrestricted access. Bipartisan convention in Australia is that only relevant Ministers, the Leader of the Opposition, and Opposition spokespersons for Defence and Foreign Affairs are fully briefed.

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That should give you a bit of crumpet to munch on while I continue my research. Please feel free to post comments, queries and opinions. Also, visit my extremely dodgy conspiracy website at The Conspiracy.

A FIVE STAR post.

What a find, thanks CS3.

The conspiracy theorists and PUF's are not gonna
like you for throwing a reality bomb in here.

/\/ight\/\/ing

What's so special about it? What's the REality bomb of it?
It's a electronic snooping base for the US and Australia..to do snooping on other countries. Fromt hat base they are able to use satellite to communicate with submarines that can launch missiles with Nukes on them. They can recieve many telephone conversaions from the middle East, Asia, etc and from very long distances...

It's a great base.
And i'm sure they would test all kinds of craft out there too..Maybe ;P
Hell...There's the whole of the Australian Outback to fly thier crafts around.

Although lightly populated, the middle of australia, especially around there is full of tourists with cameras, i doubt they test anything out there... would you ?

[Edited on 8-1-2004 by PeAtI]

This has been discussed before at lenght.

Pine Gap is a communications dowlink and relay station for US spy and communications satellites. As payment for letting the US use this land (which provides excellent coverage of the SW pacific - an area were the US has no other real presence), the Australians are entitled to have access to the "product" which these satellite produce.

If you think about it, the Australians are getting an excellent deal for very short money.

it seems like australia gets a good deal, but obviously the U.S first decides what to share with australia. It also seems to perpetuate a dependant relationship- what if the U.S decided not to share, what state would that leave australian intelligence in. Sharing data seems okay, but the whole idea of americans using australia to gather info, then choosing what to hand over seems to keep australia in a subordinate position...just where they want us i'm guessing.

The U.S. is not dependent on Australia to gather the data. The satellites do that quite efficiently by themselves. Its just a matter of convenience.
The NRO can get the data as the satellite come over the horizon near Pearl Harbor, but sometimes its just faster to get the downlink at Australia.

Also, the Australian site allows the US to have a comm "footprint" in the SW Pacific and Indian ocean areas.